By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In their first game away from Scott Stadium this season, the No. 25 Virginia Cavaliers took their first loss Saturday night (Sept. 19) at Bank of America Stadium.
Against West Virginia, whose fans made up most of the crowd of 39,377, UVA twice led in the Duke’s Mayo Classic: first at 7-0 and then at 14-7. But the Mountaineers’ trio of playmakers—quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr., tailback Cam Cook and wide receiver DJ Epps—proved too much for the Wahoos to stop.
After Virginia tied the game at 21-21 midway through the third quarter, WVU ran off 17 straight points. UVA scored the game’s final touchdown, on a 2-yard pass from quarterback Beau Pribula to tight end John Rogers with 21 seconds left, but WVU walked away with a 38-27 victory.
The Cavaliers, who are in their fifth season under head coach Tony Elliott, dropped to 2-1. The Mountaineers improved to 3-0, thanks in large part to the contributions of Hawkins, Cook and Epps.
Hawkins and Cook each rushed for 123 yards, and Hawkins had three touchdown runs. Epps caught three passes for 92 yards and two TDs. Hawkins completed only 10 passes, but they netted 190 yards.
“You’ve got to tip your hat to West Virginia,” Elliott said. “They won the game. They made the competitive plays when they needed to make the competitive plays.”
The Cavaliers came to Charlotte having rarely been tested in one-sided wins over NC State and Norfolk State at Scott Stadium. They encountered much more resistance Saturday night from a team whose head coach, Rich Rodriguez, was offensive coordinator at Clemson for Elliott’s first two seasons as a wideout there.
UVA’s first “two games had gone in a certain way where we didn't have a ton of adversity,” Elliott said, “and when we did have any adversity, we quickly captured the momentum. I knew going into this game, with that bunch on the other sideline and their ability to score quickly and be explosive, that we were gonna have some adversity. There were times when we responded the right way in all three phases, and then I thought there were times where we could have responded better in all three phases. And then that's my job as a coach: to identify exactly what was off in those moments and do a better job of helping the guys to be better in those tight moments.”
In a series that started in 1898, this was the first game between these border rivals since 2002. That was also played at Bank of America Stadium, where Virginia upended No. 15 West Virginia 48-22 in the inaugural Continental Tire Bowl.
Early on Saturday night, the Cavaliers again looked dominant. After forcing a three-and-out on the game’s opening possession, Virginia responded with a drive that took 6:58 off the clock. It ended with tailback Jekail Middlebrook’s first touchdown as a Cavalier, an 8-yard run through a WVU defense knocked on its heels by UVA’s veteran offensive line.
The Mountaineers weren’t fazed. They responded with a drive capped by Hawkins’ 13-yard touchdown run. The Cavaliers regained the lead when Xavier Brown raced 47 yards for a TD late in the first quarter, but their offense rarely hummed after that.
WVU pulled even early in the second quarter and then went ahead 21-14 on Hawkins’ 15-yard TD run (and Jack Cassidy’s PAT) with 26 seconds remaining in the half.
For the first time all season, the Hoos found themselves trailing, but they punched back in the third quarter. In his UVA debut, wideout Rico Flores Jr. made his first catch one to remember. On fourth-and-10 from the WVU 34, Flores made a contested grab of a 26-yard pass from Pribula.
Three plays later, Middlebrook gathered in a 1-yard pass from Pribula for Virginia’s third TD, and Bettridge’s PAT made it 21-21.
The momentum soon swung back in West Virginia’s direction. With 12 seconds left in the third quarter, Hawkins hit Epps with a 21-yard touchdown pass, and the Mountaineers were ahead to stay. Hawkins’ final TD came on a 5-yard run with 35-21 remaining.
“It was hard to box him in,” UVA defensive end Fisher Camac said of Hawkins. “We didn't do a good enough job of it.”
Coming in, Elliott said, the Cavaliers wanted to make Hawkins “one-dimensional if we could, but tonight we struggled in some situations. And I thought when we did get [WVU] into some third-and-long situations, he just made the more competitive play than we did. So I’ve got to do a better job of having the guys prepared to go make the competitive play in those situations.”
Camac recorded a team-high 11 tackles, the most by a UVA defensive lineman since Eli Harold had 11 in 2013. Cornerback Jacobie Henderson, a Charlotte native, also finished with a career high in tackles with 10 stops, while linebacker Kam Robinson had eight.
On offense, Virginia totaled 354 yards. Middlebrook and Brown rushed for 75 and 71 yards, respectively. Another tailback, Xay Davis, led the Cavaliers with 51 yards receiving, and tight end Dakota Twitty added 46 yards on four catches.
Pribula completed 21-of-33 passes for 197 yards and two touchdowns, and he wasn’t intercepted. But the Mountaineers sacked him three times and pressured him repeatedly in the second half.
“They did a good job making adjustments,” UVA offensive tackle Monroe Mills said. “I felt the first quarter or two we picked up it really well. They came in [at halftime] and made some big-time changes, and obviously we weren’t quite there.”
Late in the game, Elliott said, the Hoos “became a little bit more one-dimensional, because we're playing from behind. I felt like when we were playing from ahead, we could kind of dictate the pace of play. And unfortunately, we weren't able to do that, especially late there in the second quarter on through the second half. We knew they would be aggressive.”
The Cavaliers competed throughout, Pribula said, but they didn’t execute at key moments.
“Obviously, we're standing here with a loss, so it wasn't close to where it should have been,” Pribula said. “But I think we'll learn and grow from this.”
A transfer from Missouri, Pribula joined the Cavaliers’ program in January. For the players who were at UVA last season, this was their second game at the Carolina Panthers’ stadium in 10 months. Virginia lost in overtime to Duke there in last year’s ACC championship.
The loss to West Virginia feels “like another dagger,” Camac said. “It's tough, but we won't let this one game define us.”
In the locker room, Elliott said, he reminded his team “that all of our goals are still on the table. I think the only goal that's not on the table is to go undefeated. So we’ve still got an opportunity to continue to control our own destiny in the league, and I think the ultimate objective is to get back here in December [for the ACC championship game].”
The Cavaliers’ challenge now, Elliott said, is “to look in the mirror and point the finger at ourselves and say, ‘Hey, how are we gonna get better?’ I'm still excited about the football team that I have. I think we’ve got everything we need, but we will be kind of developed by the way we respond to the adversity that we experienced tonight.”
UP NEXT: The annual UVA Strong game is next weekend at Scott Stadium. At 6 p.m. Saturday, No. 25 Virginia (2-1) hosts Delaware (2-1). The first-ever football game between these schools will air on ACC Network.
Delaware, a member of Conference USA, is in its second season in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision. The Fightin’ Blue Hens defeated Coastal Carolina 22-14 in Newark, Del., in a game that started at 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
The UVA Strong game honors the memories of Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry, the Cavalier football players who were shot and killed in November 2022 after returning to Grounds from a class field trip. Two other UVA students were injured in the shooting, including Mike Hollins, a running back on the football team.
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